20.1 Food supply

Five Cambridge-named methods humans use to increase food production: agricultural machinery, chemical fertilisers, insecticides, herbicides, and selective breeding. Trade-offs of two intensive farming systems — large-scale monoculture (yield + efficiency, but disease vulnerability through genetic uniformity, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss) and intensive livestock production (cheap meat from controlled high-density rearing, but disease transmission, animal welfare, and antibiotic resistance concerns).